Union Minister Anupriya Patel calls for India to move beyond its current role as a global pharmaceutical supplier and laboratory, focusing on research, innovation, and emerging technologies such as AI. She highlights India's contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses government initiatives to support this transition.
During her speech at the third edition of the IIMA Healthcare Summit 2026 on 'Advancing AI in Healthcare', Union Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare and Chemicals & Fertilizers Smt. Anupriya Patel emphasized the need for India to transition beyond its current role as a global pharmaceutical supplier, also known as 'Pharmacy of the World', and laboratory, known as 'Laboratory of the World'.
The Minister highlighted India’s contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic. She stated that the Indian pharmaceutical industry ensured uninterrupted supplies of vaccines and essential medical products to more than 200 countries, while India’s vaccination programme administered over 140 crore doses.
Speaking about the transformational power of AI, the Minister highlighted its potential to accelerate drug discovery, enable personalized treatments, and strengthen healthcare delivery through improved screening, clinical decision-making, and disease surveillance. The Minister stressed that AI adoption must be safe, responsible, and human-centered, with strong safeguards for patient privacy and technology complementing, rather than replacing, human clinical judgement.
The Minister called for moving from pilots to population-level implementation through stronger collaboration among Government, academia, healthcare institutions, startups, and industry. She also stated that Centres of Excellence for AI in healthcare have been established at AIIMS New Delhi, PGIMER Chandigarh, and AIIMS Rishikesh.
The Minister discussed the ₹5,000 crore Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma-MedTech Sector (PRIP) Scheme, which aims at strengthening research and industry-academia collaboration and supports transition towards innovation-led growth. She also highlighted the ₹10,000 crore Biopharma SHAKTI mission announced in the Union Budget to strengthen capabilities in biologics and biosimilars, develop skilled manpower, strengthen regulatory and clinical trial capabilities to support the domestic biopharmaceutical ecosystem.
Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals, highlighted the growing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. He spoke about startups leveraging AI for drug discovery, enabling faster identification of potential drug candidates and significantly reducing the time required for drug discovery.
Source:
Press Information Bureau
